A teacher in New York City wrote to tell me that he worked in the dairy industry for many years before becoming a teacher.

When he read about Jeb Bush touting the virtues of choosing schools the way we choose milk, he laughed.

Did you know, he wrote, that a small number of big corporations control the dairy industry. No matter what label is on the carton, the odds are that you are buying from agri-business, not a small producer. There are really only two kinds of milk–skim and cream–and all the others are variations, built from one or the other.

In many places, you think you are choosing, but all the milk comes from the same corporation.

The illusion of choice.

That’s not what gets me, though. What gets me is that Jeb’s argument is intended to dissolve any sense of public responsibility for basic services.

Yes, privatization is at war with our many public “goods” like public parks, schools, hospitals, housing, post office, mass transit, etc. And, some things should not be industrialized either into mass production, like the food chain and like the nurturing of our children.

What about those of us who reject all the sugar additives and steroids they add to their milk? Isn’t it really all the same bad choice disguised with a sickening sugary injection? What if some of us just want the water we had?

Corporations lobby very hard and very successfully to prevent consumers from having the information they need to make informed choices — for example, lobbying against labels for genetically modified foods.